d to go back of a wood that was a little to the northwest
of Grafenstafel, where they were able to stop the German onrush.

The Belgians were bombarded with asphyxiating gas bombs beyond
the French lines south of Dixmude. The Germans charged the Belgian
trenches only to be cut down by machine-gun fire. That night, the
night of May 3, 1915, an attack was made on the British front;
but it was stopped by the artillery.

Sir Herbert Plumer in the meantime had been executing the order he
had received from Sir John French, and shortened his lines so they
were three miles less in length than before starting the movement.
The new line extended from the French position west of the
Ypres-Langemarck Road and proceeded through "shell-trap" farm to
the Haanebeek and the eastern part of the Frezenberg ridge where it
turned south, covering Bellewaarde Lake and Hooge and bent around
Hill 60. This resulted in leaving to the Germans the Veldhoek,
Bosche, and Polygon Woods, and Fortuin and Zonnebeke. This new
front protected all of the roads to Ypres, and, at the same time,
it was not necessary to employ as many soldiers to hold this line.
Moreover the defenders of it could not be fired upon from three
sides as long as they held it. In some places the British and German
trenches had been no more than ten yards apart, but the difficulty
of evacuating the British position was completed in safety on the
night of May 3, 1915. The work included the taking with them 780
wounded. Sharpshooters were left in the trenches, however, and
they maintained such an appearance of activity and alertness that
the Germans kept on shelling the trenches all of the following
day.

The attempt of General Putz to force the Germans back across the
Yperlee Canal on May 4, 1915, was stopped by a combination of machine
guns, asphyxiating gas and fog. Then the French spent the next
ten days in tunneling to Steenstraate. Their tunnels toward their
objective point were through that territory between Boesinghe and
Lizerne. On May 5, 1915 the Germans made a careful advance on the
British front under the cover of fog and a heavy bombardment, to
find only that the British position had been changed. But they
intrenched opposite the new alignment, and brought up their big
guns. Then they used poisonous gas again with the result that the
British retreated and the Teutons followed, in spite of the many
men who fell because of the accurate work of the British artillery.
The